Senators ‘Shocked’ To Learn TikTok Does Things Only Made Possible By Their Corrupt Failure To Pass A Real Privacy Law
from the you-are-not-serious-people dept
We’ve noted a few times now how the quest to ban TikTok is heavily peppered with bad faith actors who historically don’t care about consumer privacy or national security. We’ve also noted how it’s performative to hyperventilate about one single sometimes-dodgy app, but ignore the broader dysfunction and corruption (like our lack of a modern privacy law, or refusal to regulate data brokers) that paved the way.
The central argument of those advocating for a TikTok ban is that it poses such a dire, unique threat to U.S. consumer privacy and national security that a ban is warranted. While TikTok certainly has engaged in idiotic behavior (like when it spied on journalists) the case why it’s so much worse than dozens of other domestic and international companies (like data brokers) still hasn’t been publicly made.
Some members of Congress have been briefed by intelligence officials on the supposedly dire and unique threats the app presents. But not all of them have been convinced. Large swaths of Congress also own stock in competing tech companies like Facebook, which has been seeding coordinated moral panics in DC about TikTok for years.
Some of the lawmakers who were briefed last week leaked word to Axios that they were “shocked” at TikTok’s “access to personal data.” But then again, these Senators aren’t the most objective or tech savviest folks on Earth, and it sounds like that a lot of what was “revealed” to them is fairly (and unfortunately) routine across most apps, services, and hardware.
Like here, where they express ambiguous concern about China’s ability to “harvest user data” and then “weaponize it” in the form of misinformation:
“One senator said national security officials described how China can harvest user data and weaponize it through propaganda and misinformation.”
Except this is already happening across a litany of apps and services. Senator Ron Wyden’s office just got done revealing how data brokers sold abortion clinic visitor location data to right wing activists, who then turned around and harassed vulnerable women with health care misinformation. Congress hasn’t made a peep, and the press coverage the story received was relatively miniscule.
Or here, where Senators leak word to Axios that the TikTok app can “determine what users are doing on other apps,” or abuse hardware permissions to monitor user behavior:
“Another lawmaker said they were told TikTok is able to spy on the microphone on users’ devices, track keystrokes and determine what the users are doing on other apps.”
From doorbell manufacturers to cable companies and your TV set, there’s no limit of companies, apps, or hardware vendors (many Chinese) that abuse hardware permissions to engage in a litany of consumer surveillance, then monetize that info globally. Congress generally couldn’t care less about the lack of privacy or consumer security in the internet-of-broken-things space or anywhere else.
And there’s no limit of companies that track user behavior across devices. That includes Facebook, which you’ll recall was busted selling users a “privacy protecting VPN” that in reality was little more than spyware designed to let Facebook (gasp) track user behavior across other apps.
We’ve noted repeatedly how international data brokers hoover up vast swaths of consumer location, behavior, demographic, and other data, using them to build elaborate consumer profiles. Access is then sold to a parade of dodgy groups, individuals, and organizations (including Chinese intelligence and right wing activists) without an iota of congressional concern.
I know I’m being redundant here, but the reason this stuff happens (whether it’s TikTok or anybody else) is because Congress has proven too corrupt to pass a meaningful internet-era privacy law. They’ve proven too corrupt to regulate data brokers, despite the fact they engage in worse behavior — at an even greater scale — than what TikTok is being critiqued for. This corruption is the real national security threat.
I suspect that if lawmakers truly had seen some kind of smoking gun related to TikTok (that goes well above and beyond broader market dysfunction we now see everyday), it would have been leaked to every right wing news outlet imaginable during their three year cable TV TikTok hyperventilation campaign.
I still tend to think the quest to ban TikTok is an unserious slurry of xenophobia and anti-competitive corruption posing as good faith concerns about privacy and national security, two subjects Congress very clearly and demonstrably couldn’t care any less about.
Filed Under: apps, china, congress, corruption, data brokers, privacy, security, tiktok ban, tracking
Companies: tiktok
Comments on “Senators ‘Shocked’ To Learn TikTok Does Things Only Made Possible By Their Corrupt Failure To Pass A Real Privacy Law”
“propaganda and misinformation”
Have they not been to any recent hearings in Washington?
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Re: Karl Bode is a liar
The reason why congress doesn’t pass a privacy law, is because the US supreme court, has already said that they can’t. This would literally amount to a content based restriction of speech, outside of the narrowly defined prohibited categories of speech when the constitution was made, and that there is no expectation of privacy to information willingly given to third parties.
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So Karl is a liar huh?
Care to give us a detailed explanation of the lies and enumerate each lie with a countering fact.
If you can’t, then you have proved to everyone that you are the liar that come here shitting the place up and everyone should flag you on sight.
I don’t have any high hopes of your character though, because who the fuck want to be the revenge porn guy. You could have used the moniker “no morals dude” and everyone would have taken what you say you more seriously.
Senators when they learn what data Tiktok collects:
Re:
You think Senators actually learn more than what stock moves will be made by their decisions?
Re: Re:
You think I was actually being serious?
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No idea, didn’t click the link.. 😉
It’s not the fact that Tiktok is doing any of these things, but rather that they’re allowing China to not pay Cambridge Analytica or other data collectors their baksheesh for access like everybody else. The leeches in the middle not getting their blood is the problem here. Frankly, Congress couldn’t care less about the peasants’ privacy but the bottom line is sacred.
Re:
The sacred line must go up and if it does not people’s livelihoods must be sacrificed to make it go up. Far better to fire 100 essential workers than 1 executive taking a pay cut.
So are you guys ever do an article on big tech news like the DOJs joke of an anti trust case against Apple? Or you just going to keep circle jerking tiktok and reporting on super minor tech news?
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We are not here to cater to your myopia.
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Have you suggested the story to them, or is being a passive-aggressive prick in the comments your idea of doing that?
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You are of course welcome to make your own bloody blog and cover news you find personally important if ‘government engages in hypocritical, bad faith and grossly unconstitutional crusade to punish foreign company they don’t like’ isn’t ‘newsworthy’ to you.
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Re: Re:
What a bunch of assholes you all are, with the ad hominems. Logical fallacies reigns here, no wonder Matthew Bennett is so welcome by y’all.
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Concern troll is unconcerning.
Re: Re: Re:
The comment you replied to wasn’t an ad hominem.
Aggressive arguably, but not an ad hom.
That being said, your own comment did have an ad hominem by way of tone policing.
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“Logical fallacies reigns here”
You do you boo.
Re: Re: Re:
How many times can you be wrong in two poorly constructed sentences?
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Dude, you left the letters ‘U’ and ‘N’ off the beginning of the word ‘unwelcome’.
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Re: dont bite the hand that feeds you?
No, they aren’t because they are on the dole, and need to pay the rent.
Re: Re:
And once again proving that stupid attracts stupid.
'They even took a cookie from the 'Free cookies, please take one' plate!'
‘How dare that foreign company do the things that we have utterly refused to prohibit or even put limits on, those loopholes were only supposed to be exploited by ‘Murican companies who wanted to spy on their users and track and monetize their every word and act!’
It’s far from perfect, but the House finally took a step towards regulating data brokers selling to China:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/20/24106991/house-data-broker-foreign-adversaries-bill-passes
Nowhere near as good as a proper privacy law, but it’s not nothing. Kinda surprised there hasn’t been any TD coverage of it, good or bad. At the very least, it’s a step beyond just focusing on TikTok exclusively.
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That might actually be worse than nothing as it strikes me as yet another attempt to frame things as ‘mass data collection, surveillance and selling of personal data is only a problem when it’s done by/sold to certain individuals’, which helps to normalize the practice in general by shifting all the blame to a very specific target.
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The problem is the data collection, not China, so it seems like a bad faith action and not the fantasy “step in the right direction” that people like to imagine or claim in these situations.
Was keeping a eye on KOSA and noticed this and it kind of worries me especially with Blumenthal might be up to something:
https://ctnewsjunkie.com/2024/03/25/blumenthal-joins-senate-colleagues-in-call-for-transparency-from-tiktok-amid-data-storage-concerns/
Re:
hmmmm